As part of its recent earnings report, Square Enix has revealed its business plans when it comes to game development and diversifying its revenue streams moving forward. As part of its plans, Square Enix has stated that it will, among other things, create a new research and development (R&D) division that will work on new AI-based development tools. The company also plans to bring the management of its future games under a single umbrella. All of the plans detailed by the company are expected to take around 3 years, with the business plan itself being referred to as a “~3 year reboot for long-term growth”.
The plans also mentioned how Square Enix has revamped its development pipeline when it came to games developed interanlly. After having reviewed the process of developing a game, the company has now changed to a system the management team of a studio will now manage all of the progress for large-scale titles. In a graph on the fourth page of the report, an example given shows how a studio can work on a major release alongside an MMO, while other studio can work purely on a console game, and yet another one can work on mobile games, all of which fall under the same franchise management division.
With this new initiative, the company has also mentioned that it has been more active in cancelling projects that might not be progressing at the rate that Square Enix wants, while also investing more resources into other projects that might just need a bit more support in terms of refinement and polish. Through this, the company is being more careful about the kinds of games it ends up releasing, while also carefully managing how its development resources are being used.
As part of its medium-term business plans, Square Enix has also once again reiterated its decision to go with multiplatform releases for its games, rather than launching exclusively on single platforms before eventually coming to other systems, like we saw with the PS5, and ultimately PC release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. This decision has already been paying off for the company, with it having reported more sales due to its games also being available on PC.
When it comes to raw figures, Square Enix is projecting operating income of 41 billion for the next fiscal year. For the sake of comparison, the company reported that it had made 40.5 billion yen in this fiscal year, making its projections a modest one. However, the company is also projecting fewer net sales than it did for fiscal year 2025, down from 324.5 billion to 280 billion. Despite this, projections for operating profit sits at around 28.7 billion yen, up from 24.4 billion yen from FY 2025.
The company had previously spoken about a shift from console exclusive releases to a multiplatform release strategy in the wake of the poor commercial performance of major games like Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. “We will shift to a multiplatform strategy,” the company said back in September 2024. “In the case of HD games, we will create a global environment that allows more customers to enjoy our major franchises and AAA titles, including from our back catalog.”
Square Enix also saw a shake-up in its board of directors earlier this year, announcing that Final Fantasy 14 producer Naoki Yoshida would no longer be serving on the board. While neither the company nor Yoshida said much about the decision at the time, a 2023 interview of Yoshida’s with Dutch publication NRC indicated that it might have been his decision. “I don’t want to be on the board. It’s much more fun to just make games,” he said.
